The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 01, 1998
Filed:
Jan. 17, 1997
Monis Rahman, San Jose, CA (US);
Mircea Poplingher, Campbell, CA (US);
Tse-Yu Yeh, Milpitas, CA (US);
Wenliang Chen, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Intel Corporation, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
Allocation circuitry for allocating entries within a set-associative cache memory is disclosed. The set-associative cache memory comprises N ways, each way having M entries and corresponding entries in each of the N ways constituting a set of entries. The allocation circuitry has a first circuit which identifies related data units by identifying a probability that the related data units may be successively read from the cache memory. A second circuit within the allocation circuitry allocates the corresponding entries in each of the ways to the related data units, so that related data units are stored in a common set of entries. Accordingly, the related data units will be simultaneously outputted from the set-associative cache memory, and are thus concurrently available for processing. The invention may find application in allocating entries of a common set in a branch prediction table (BPT) to branch prediction information for related branch instructions.